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hey all I have recently come into a group of players wanting to try out pathfinder, about 6 in all. So we discussed it all and they decided they want to play through an adventure path. instead of society, due to the fact that all 6 have never played a pen and paper game before.
which leads me to my problem, and why i come to you guy's fellow pathfinders which of the adventure paths would in your opinion be best to run for brand new wet behind the ears players. your thoughts and suggestions r much appreciated
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hey all I have recently come into a group of players wanting to try out pathfinder, about 6 in all. So we discussed it all and they decided they want to play through an adventure path. instead of society, due to the fact that all 6 have never played a pen and paper game before.
which leads me to my problem, and why i come to you guy's fellow pathfinders which of the adventure paths would in your opinion be best to run for brand new wet behind the ears players. your thoughts and suggestions r much appreciated
Rise of the Runelords is by far the best AP IMHO, but the DM would have have to convert it to Pathfinder from 3.5 on the fly. It's not hard to do, but it is extra work.
Of the 3 released that are full Pathfinder, I'm not a big fan of Council of Thieves, Kingmaker is good, but not really a good intro to world since it's kind of it's own sandbox. I'm liking Serpent's Skull so far, but it's not done yet so...
My advice is do RoTRL. It is a great intro to the world, and the conversion isn't too bad (I did it mainly on the fly when I ran it)
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I would recommend Serpent's Skull or Kingmaker.
Serpent's Skull
Pros: Straightforward plot, and classic story line. No add-on rules just straight up killing monsters, taking their stuff and finding lost cities. Plus great African thematics.
Cons: Occasionally rail-roady (but this can be handy for new players). Can be HARD, but as the GM you can keep an eye on that and ramp back the challenge if you're worried.
Kingmaker
Pros: Sandbox means new players can truly experience freedom unlike any video game. Really fun encounters that are quickly and easily customisable (just drop in a dungeon or remove a monster from a hex).
Cons: Random encounters can be BROOTAL, (but you can keep an eye on that). Kingdom Building and Mass Combat rules can be very intense for a group of new players to learn (it's possible to play with the Kingdom in the Background, but Kingdom building is half the fun).
Good luck. ^_^
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Legacy of Fire is also a good choice if you like Arabian Nights type stuff.
The issue with RotR is that it is difficult to get in hard copy now. Having said that if you are happy to run from pdf's or are happy to print your pdf's then you can't go too far wrong.
My advice is to go through each AP with your players and ask them which they would prefer to play. Keep your descriptions general and vague so the players don't get too many spoilers.
My order of what I would run for new players goes something like:
Rise of the Runelords
Legacy of Fire
Serpent's Skull
Curse of the Crimson Throne
Council of Thieves
Kingmaker
Second Darkness
Kingmaker is low down because it adds extra rules for kingdom building which can be complex so it is better as your second AP (it is awesome though). Council of Thieves and Second Darkness are low down because they are generally seen as good but not great. The rest are pretty good choices in my humble opinion.
Any of those top 4 would be my recommendations. And bear in mind opinions do vary on this.
I would look at the story for each and give your players the basic flavor of each AP and ask which one they would like the most
Because Personally I like them all for differnt reasons
One thing to keep in mind is that a majority of the encounters written in an AP would be balanced for a 4 person party, so you may need to take a look at how your players are progressing and whether or not you need to tweak the challenges up a notch.
Rise of the Runelords and if you look on the Rise of the Runelords Board someone has already done the conversions :) but they all are awesome. I like the Chrimsone Throne one as well as it makes a great city adventure. Kingmaker is awesome but you are building your own kingdome.
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One thing to keep in mind in addition to potential conversions you may have to do from 3.5 to Pathfinder. For the most part AP's are set up for four player characters and if you have six you might need to take a quick gander at encounters during your game session prep to see if you need to ramp up the difficulty (if they are brand spanking new to roleplaying it might be less of a concern, as you guys might be have a perfectly good time learning the game rather than worrying about how deadly a troll is).
For recommendations, here are my opinions which are like posteriors and subject to wild deviations from human to human.
- Rise of the Runelords - Features a lot of classic environments and monsters long beloved by gamers. The adventures are also varied. Some real talent in terms of adventure authors here as well. A great humble-start followed by a steady climb to greatness for players.
- Curse of the Crimson Throne - A great urban campaign with a focused plot line, cool npcs, villains and a chance to lay down a hollerin' whoop-arse on Korvosa.
- Second Darkness - This one is the worst of the bunch, and even then it isn't what I would call terrible (play Thousand Thrones in Warhammer Fantasy 2nd edition to see a truly awful published campaign). You just have to have accepting players willing to follow a rapidly altering plot line held together by some firm railroad plot devices. Get passed that and there are cool encounters, Drow, apocolyptic events and the support articles in this AP are top notch (albeit primarily for GM's only). It should also be noted I did not actually run this campaign. I simply read enough to know that my players would be left going...wtf...at certain points which would just be a bugger of a time.
- Legacy of Fire - An arabian nights-esque desert based campaign done quite well in my opinion (being that of a white kid that has no real root in that culture). However, if your players don't want to spend an entire character's growth to power in that adventure construct they will chafe at the reins. I loved it...my players liked it...and the end of the campaign was a bit of me dragging them along.
- Council of Theives - This one is an urban campaign set in devil bound cheliax. There are a couple of weak modules here that kind of sidelined this AP for me. I absolutely loved Richard Pett's work and I thuroughly enjoyed some of the encounters as written, but overall the campaign wasn't strong enough for me to toss it at my players. This was primarily due to the fact that we had already played Crimson Throne and I wasn't sure if I wanted to follow up their luke-warm feelings toward Legacy of Fire with something they might just decide to focus on our Dark Heresy campaign in place of. It should also be noted that the Golarion source information on Hellknights is just wonderful and as always you have cool new critters in the Beastiary section of the AP.
- Kingmaker - Awesome. It fits my group really well and can be nearly any kind of campaign you wish to form it into. It will probably occupy the next year or so of my group's monthly sessions due to the ample opportunities for "what's over that next hill"-itis that my guys have. HOWEVER...the open concept will confuse people not looking for that type of adventuring, and for new players there is plenty to learn in just getting comofortable with the rules so be cautioned that they may need to aquire a real taste for roleplaying before you spring something like this on em.
- Serpent's Skull - Own it, haven't played it. And I've been so busy with Kingmaker that I haven't been able to geek out too hard on the ins-and-outs of it all.
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wow herbo. thanks, good to see someone who is just going threw them all i like it. for my players they are all new to roleplaying like a baby is to walking.
i myself have been gaming since i was well a baby lol litereally i was 2 when i apparently trotted into my brothers room of his friends and made them let me roll die, if they tried to kick me out (which was hard cause i was a cute little son of a gun and my brother had his hot gf playing at the time he he) i would cry until i was allowed back in. :)
anyways back to what i wanted to say, right now it looks like serpent skull or runelords. knowing that there is already coversions out there for runelords makes me happy. but i am a fan of the adventure island setting thing of serpents skull. i'll put it up to them and maybe buy the first mod of each before i run just so i can understand them well enough for newbies
i'll put it up to them and maybe buy the first mod of each before i run just so i can understand them well enough for newbies
RORL is going to be in PDF format only they sold out long time ago
Legacy of Fire was a great campaign setting and had quite a bit of flavor. Council of Thieves was another good one since it didn't go to that high of a level in the end so it would be a bit easier on your GM.
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hey all I have recently come into a group of players wanting to try out pathfinder, about 6 in all. So we discussed it all and they decided they want to play through an adventure path. instead of society, due to the fact that all 6 have never played a pen and paper game before.
which leads me to my problem, and why i come to you guy's fellow pathfinders which of the adventure paths would in your opinion be best to run for brand new wet behind the ears players. your thoughts and suggestions r much appreciated
If they've never played a pen and paper game before, I'd seriously consider not doing an Adcventure Path. They're great, but they're also a lot of work, especially for the GM. They're also long. My group's fast and we've been playing Council of Thieves (itself quite a short campaign) for almost a year.
You might want to consider the linked modules Crypt of the Everflame, Masks of the Living God and City of Golden Death as these are a lesser commitment. You could also play Pathfinder Society scenarios without being an actual part of the society and that would be another recommendation.
Not going to comment on the quality of the various Adventure Paths as they've been covered before.
They're great, but they're also a lot of work, especially for the GM.
Depending on how new the DM is to roleplaying, trying to make your own adventures, or trying to cobble a satisfactory story of stand-alone modules (or pathfinder society) can be just as much work.
My background to roleplaying was I became a Might & Magic fan since around 1994 or so. I had been playing a text-based online roleplaying game called Armageddon since 2002 (otherwise known as an RPI MUD).
I began playing 4th ed in 2008 when it came out. I thought coming to D&D I'd be able to quickly understand how to DM, so I started writing my own adventures. TPK's occurred constantly. So I switched to LFR to get more experience with the ruleset and to meet gamers in my local area.
As someone who came from a long roleplaying background, I found the lack of connecting story in stand-alone modules and LFR to be very frustrating. I think I lasted 6 months or so before I became fed up with LFR and moved back to home campaigns (this time, which much more success). Pathfinder Society hasn't fared any better for me (just not my cup of tea to be honest. It works for some folks, just not me. That said I will be DMing at least 8 mods of Pathfinder Society coming up. This is because my group wants to play Cult of the Ebon Destroyers as a Society game. So I've offered to run enough mods to get their characters into an appropriate level for the mod. This way I get some Pathfinder DMing practice in which I need).
I don't know how much the OP's experience mirrors mine. But that's why I would recommend an adventure path over stand-alone modules.
That said if the OP does decide to go with Pathfinder Society I would highly recommend playing "X-Part" mods. They help keep the story flowing from one mod to the next. I'd also look for modules that follow a similar theme or are geographically close to each other to help keep a story flowing from one module to the next.
They're also long. My group's fast and we've been playing Council of Thieves (itself quite a short campaign) for almost a year.
We just started a Council of Thieves campaign. We were able to complete the first book in one day. However my group does consist of 4 Living Greyhawk veterans, three of whom have been playing Pathfinder since it was first announced. Plus myself, a relative newbie to Pathfinder (I first started playing Pathfinder in December, 2009 and have played maybe 20 days worth of Pathfinder since then). So it could be we're just rather good at Pathfinder (we certainly weren't good at avoiding traps. I lost count of how many times my nobleman asked them not to do something stupid).
Depending on how often you can get together, I'd say a reasonable expectation for a home campaign is 1 book a month. This assume you get 4 "half day" session in a month (so either once a week for half a day, or twice a month for a full day each time). It also assumes you don't play in any other campaigns (with my 4th ed group, we get together once a fortnight but are currently playing in 5 campaigns at once. So it's taking us forever. Fortunately 2 of the campaigns are about to end).
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If they've never played a pen and paper game before, I'd seriously consider not doing an Adcventure Path. They're great, but they're also a lot of work, especially for the GM. They're also long. My group's fast and we've been playing Council of Thieves (itself quite a short campaign) for almost a year.
You might want to consider the linked modules Crypt of the Everflame, Masks of the Living God and City of Golden Death as these are a lesser commitment. You could also play Pathfinder Society scenarios without being an actual part of the society and that would be another recommendation.
Not going to comment on the quality of the various Adventure Paths as they've been covered before.
What Paul said!
DMing a whole AP is a huge commitement. It takes time (depending on how often you play, it could take years to play through one single AP).The Falcon Hollow Module Series is great to start with new players. The story can easily get you to 7th or 8th level, and you can always stop during that series.
The modules are:
Falcon Hollow's Last Hope
Crown of the Kobold King
Carnival of Fears
Revenge of the kobold King
Hungry are the Dead
You could add PALLID PLAGUE (a PF-Society Scenario) to that mix, 'cause it's situated in that area.
I would highly reccomned to start with modules, rather than an AP if your players never played pen&paper before!
From what I've seen of Serpent's Skull, the later parts seem to be to dungeon-heavy for my taste.
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I was going to say RotRL, but instead the more I think about it I think Serpent's Skull might work best. It has a pretty clear over all story arc that once started should keep the players on track, it has a nice mix of things early on before getting fairly dungeon heavy and who doesn't like the idea of exploring lost cities? Of course if the players are looking for more classic fantasy for their first time this might not be the best choice.
I would ask the players what kinda of game they would like to play in and discuss it as a group. That should help you decided what is the best AP to introduce them with. I mean if they all are fans of and would like to explore 1001 Arabian Nights LoF would be your best bet.
If they've never played a pen and paper game before, I'd seriously consider not doing an Adcventure Path. They're great, but they're also a lot of work, especially for the GM. They're also long. My group's fast and we've been playing Council of Thieves (itself quite a short campaign) for almost a year.
You might want to consider the linked modules Crypt of the Everflame, Masks of the Living God and City of Golden Death as these are a lesser commitment. You could also play Pathfinder Society scenarios without being an actual part of the society and that would be another recommendation.
Not going to comment on the quality of the various Adventure Paths as they've been covered before.
What Paul said!
DMing a whole AP is a huge commitement. It takes time (depending on how often you play, it could take years to play through one single AP).The Falcon Hollow Module Series is great to start with new players. The story can easily get you to 7th or 8th level, and you can always stop during that series.
The modules are:
Falcon Hollow's Last Hope
Crown of the Kobold King
Carnival of Fears
Revenge of the kobold King
Hungry are the Dead
You could add PALLID PLAGUE (a PF-Society Scenario) to that mix, 'cause it's situated in that area.I would highly reccomned to start with modules, rather than an AP if your players never played pen&paper before!
+1, I've been DM'ing for 23 years and even I find the AP's to be a challenge to run.
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After GMing for 20+ years. I recomend playing modules first as well. There is a short story arc called the Price of Immortality trilogy. That is Crypt of the Everflame, Masks of the Living God, and City of Golden Death. The first mod is simple making it easy for the players to get started.More of a small dungon cral(1st level). The second is harder then the first and realy starts to test the players. More rp in this one the the other two(3rd level). The last one well lets not talk about how meny ways the PC can die. This is just crule to the players in so meny ways(5th level).