5.
I dont do PFS but I would probably give those 1 or 2, but only because they are standardized for everyone to experience equally.
Did you ever find those links I asked for?
5 always 5!
Creative Director
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Depends on if my GM is as good or better a storyteller than the author of the module, frankly.
If a module is brilliant, I'd prefer 0. If the module is terrible, I prefer a 5.
So for me? 3 is the best—I want the GM to adjust the adventure to fit my character and my party and to be able to react to what we do in a way that feels natural, but neither do I want the GM to so dramatically change the adventure that it doesn't resemble it at all. Of course, in theory I don't know if the GM changes anything anyway—and if I have a GM who's obviously screwing up the story (either because he's just not a good GM or because he doesn't have good enough taste to pick adventures that are fun) I'll bow out of the game anyway.
Think of it this way. The GM's role is like the role of a narrator for an audio book. It could be the BEST audio book in the world, but if the narrator mispronounces everything and uses inappropriate voices for characters or otherwise does a poor job reading the book, you're going to have a bad time even if the book is brilliant. Likewise, an audiobook reader who read the entire book verbatim and clearly but is dull and monotoned will make the experience suck as well. Your only window into the book is via the reader's voice, and while you want that voice to be pleasant and entertaining, you don't want it getting in the way of the book itself.
Depends on if my GM is as good or better a storyteller than the author of the module, frankly.
If a module is brilliant, I'd prefer 0. If the module is terrible, I prefer a 5.
So for me? 3 is the best—I want the GM to adjust the adventure to fit my character and my party and to be able to react to what we do in a way that feels natural, but neither do I want the GM to so dramatically change the adventure that it doesn't resemble it at all. Of course, in theory I don't know if the GM changes anything anyway—and if I have a GM who's obviously screwing up the story (either because he's just not a good GM or because he doesn't have good enough taste to pick adventures that are fun) I'll bow out of the game anyway.
Think of it this way. The GM's role is like the role of a narrator for an audio book. It could be the BEST audio book in the world, but if the narrator mispronounces everything and uses inappropriate voices for characters or otherwise does a poor job reading the book, you're going to have a bad time even if the book is brilliant. Likewise, an audiobook reader who read the entire book verbatim and clearly but is dull and monotoned will make the experience suck as well. Your only window into the book is via the reader's voice, and while you want that voice to be pleasant and entertaining, you don't want it getting in the way of the book itself.
'Fess up. Does it bug you to think about DMs relentlessly bastardizing your hard work in written adventures?
5, and it seems to me like a true 1 is not even possible.
No module ever accounts for player actions so thoroughly that you can say you ran it "as written". If you're a player, and this is your expectation, you really ought to try your hand at GMing.
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Because I want to play the adventure as written not read it. Why not just read every AP and play none of them? Kind of defeats the purpose.
One of the greatest things about running Shackled City for different groups is seeing how different parties react to the same events and what changes I am forced to make to the modules to accommodate them.
Non-PFS, making no assumptions about the quality of the adventure or the quality of the GM:
Editorial control? The GM has Game Mastery, which is greater than the powers of any editor. 5.
Where things get complicated is the varying quality between published adventures and GMs. The better the adventure is and the worse the GM is, the more closely the GM should hew to the adventure as written, approaching a score of 0. But the best adventure is always the one the expert GM has made her own and adapted to herself and her group.
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PFS - 0 The mod should be run exactly as is. No changes.
Non-PFS - 3.5 I prefer to know that if the GM's being a jerk, it's the AP's fault, not his (and vice versa when I am GMing).
The longer a GM has been Gming a particular group of people, the more free-reign he/she should have, since he/she probably knows what would be fun/best for the group.
For a GM with a completely new group, no matter how experienced the GM is, he/she should run it fairly close to the AP.
Running the AP as is works in the GM's favor, in my opinion.
The longer a GM has been Gming a particular group of people, the more free-reign he/she should have, since he/she probably knows what would be fun/best for the group.
For a GM with a completely new group, no matter how experienced the GM is, he/she should run it fairly close to the AP.
Good points, Deidre.
Non PFS answer (since i don't know how treasure works in PFS)
4.8 - As long as the DM isn't modifying the adventure with the specific intent of neutering one character or depriving the party of treasure it should be fine.
Non-PFS published adventures: I'd agree with the "it depends" crowd, and average a 3. If a GM totally changes the published mod, why run it? But a good GM should allow for modification based on player actions, as no AP will take into account every move a group can make. For myself, I like to add personal stuff for each of my players above and beyond the main plot; I doubt I'll ever run a pure 2, much less a 1.
PFS? Maybe 1.5 I don't mind slight modifications, but if the written mod is set in the slums of Absalom, I don't want to find myself in Irrisen or Magnimar. :)
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Creative Director
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'Fess up. Does it bug you to think about DMs relentlessly bastardizing your hard work in written adventures?
To a certain extent, yes.
It's actually a bit of an awkward subject for me, since I generally DON'T think my adventures are the best ever. It actually weirds me out to point out that I've won several awards for adventures I've written or adventures I've heavily revised and developed. But I'll tell a story about that anyway.
The WotC adventure "Red Hand of Doom" is VERY well reviewed. I often see it cited as the best adventure WotC published for 3.5, in fact, and people seem VERY pleased with it. WotC themselves chose "Red Hand of Doom" as a cornerstone for the launch of 4th edition and their first 30-level Adventure Path in the online Dungeon. All of that tells me that the module itself is really quite well done (and not just the writing—about a quarter of the module as well as its plot were devised by Rich Baker, and I had nothing really to do with the layout or the art, which is also quite important).
Yet one day, as I was cruising around on ENWorld, I saw a thread that said something like, "Red Hand of Doom: WORST ADVENTURE EVER!!"
Needless to say, I was curious. "What could cause such a reaction, when most of the other reviews of the adventure were glowing?"
So I read the guy's review of "Red Hand of Doom," and it's a pretty long and detailed one. He goes through, point by point, explaining how the adventure sucks. I can't remember if he actually came out and said anything like "My GM is very talented and I normally love the adventures he runs," but I think he did.
But as I read his review, one thing immediately came to light—Every Single Complaint he had about "Red Hand of Doom" was, unknown to him as far as I can tell, a direct result of a poorly thought-out change that his GM had made to the adventure. In several cases, they were actually complaints about things that we specifically called out as "danger zones" in the adventure and provided advice on how to avoid or handle those problems, but this guy's GM obviously ignored that advice entirely and willfully embraced methods of play that we said in the text to avoid. And in just as many places, the things that the guy was complaining about were entirely new creations by his GM—elements that simply didn't exist in the module as written.
So in this case, you have a player experiencing an adventure and HATING it... not because the adventure was bad, but because his GM was bad.
And that's also a tricky subject. Not every GM is equal. Most of them are average—that's the DEFINITION of average, after all. Which means that an equal number of GMs are terrible as there are GMs that are brilliant. This is a truth that gamers don't really talk about, because in most cases, the GM is also a good friend. In other cases, the GM is the ONLY GM in the area, so you don't really have a choice. And in others, it might even be a case of lack of breadth—if you've only ever been GMed by one person ever, that person is by definition the best GM you've ever had. EVEN if he's actually a terrible GM.
So to bring the topic back around to the original subject—yes... it's important for a GM to be able to tweak an adventure, but not all GMs have the skill to actually IMPROVE an adventure. Published adventures, at least in Paizo's case, go through a VERY rigorous level of quality control—we don't just publish any old adventure that comes along. I like to think we publish the best adventures we can, and I hope that the GMs who run them are up to the challenge of presenting them. But I know that they're not all equally talented. So I hope, for the sake of their players' enjoyment, that they're not modifying the adventures we worked so hard to make as fun and enjoyable as possible, in ways that they (perhaps unknowingly) are decreasing the fun.
Anyway... that's enough ego and hubris from me for now. I gotta go punish myself for sinning.
I will be blunt - you insult professional chefs everywhere by comparing the two. Paizo APs are filled with incredibly stupid errors caused by a complete lack of foresight, among other factors. Particularly those of mid and high levels. It's like playing a primitive video game, both in terms of the extreme linearity (as doing otherwise breaks the published module, any published module) and because it's extremely buggy and therefore easy to Sequence Break.
AoW? ST? SC? All of them have extreme and grievous errors and oversights, that if found (and it's not hard to find them) completely break the module by skipping whole sections of it. Sometimes they all but draw attention to their own mistakes, and yet still seemingly expect you not to notice them.
As such they are unusable without a complete overwrite, as otherwise the instant the players stop nicely playing along the game breaks.
Some of the later modules are...
Wow. That's just not my experience with the APs. I've DMd Savage Tide and Rise of the Runelords both start to finish and am now running Curse of the Crimson Throne. I've been Dming D&D since 1985. I just don't see the horrendous problems you mention. I'm not interested in derailing this thread but I would love to hear some specific examples from the APs of the problems you cite.
If I had the experience you have apparently had with pre-published stuff I would feel the same way. Of course, if I did, I wouldn't be posting on these message boards since I would not be Paizo customer. Thanks for the insight.
I just wrote a long post in response to Codzilla's nonsense and the postmonster ate it.
In short he makes severe exaggerations all the time based on "because I said so". Don't bother asking him to explain anything because most of the time he won't.|
Creative Director
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AoW? ST? SC? All of them have extreme and grievous errors and oversights, that if found (and it's not hard to find them) completely break the module by skipping whole sections of it. Sometimes they all but draw attention to their own mistakes, and yet still seemingly expect you not to notice them.
It's interesting that you chose the first three Adventure Paths that we created as your examples. I'll be the FIRST to agree with you that we made some pretty big errors in those earlier adventures... but I'd also immediately follow that up with two observations:
1) We learn a HELL of a lot every time we do an Adventure Path. I think that the improvement between those first three APs is immense—if only from the pre-planning staage. Shackled City was thrown together as we went. We didn't outline it at the start—we DID do a detailed outline for Age of Worms, and it made a huge difference. But we didn't do any concepting art for it—when we got to Shackled City, we had some artists create some REALLY cool concept art for the AP so that we'd have a look for the entire campaign that made it feel solid. And those are just a few examples—we're continuing to refine and perfect the Adventure Path format all the time. I'd be curious to see what you thought of, say, Kingmaker, which is the most recent of our Adventure paths that are fully available.
2) As tragic and hopeless as you seem to indicate those first few Adventure Paths are... they were both ENORMOUSLY successful and ENORMOUSLY popular. They are, essentially, the reason Dungeon Magazine wasn't cancelled at around issue #100. They are ALSO the reason Paizo exists today—the Adventure Path concept is the backbone of the entire business. It's what keeps our doors open (the rulebook line itself is what lets us decorate those doors with diamonds and gold). That tells me that we're doing something right. If that's equal to what fast food franchises are doing right in order to stay open... I guess I have to be okay with that too.
CLOSING CHALLENGE: We're ALWAYS looking for talented new authors and designers to take on freelance assignments. So consider this a challenge—if you think you, or frankly ANYONE, thinks they're able to produce better content than we're already offering... we want to hear about it. Take part in RPG superstar. Submit adventures to our Pathfinder Society org play. Submit articles to other companies like Open Design or Green Ronin or Super Genius Games. Let us know about your talents. Because if you're as good as you claim to be, I want to give you money to help make US more awesome! :-)
If, on the other hand, you're just trying to keep us from getting comfortable on our high horses... keep going! Complacency is bad, and if we at Paizo ever start getting lazy about trying to improve our game, that'd be a shame.
And if, on the OTHER hand (I'm a three handed mutant!), you're just beating your chest and showing off and aren't really interested in helping us at Paizo get better at what we're trying to do, then I'll just go back to work and try not to be insulted by your accusations, I suppose.
...
It's actually a bit of an awkward subject for me, since I generally DON'T think my adventures are the best ever. It actually weirds me out to point out that I've won several awards for adventures I've written or adventures I've heavily revised and developed. But I'll tell a story about that anyway....
Anyway... that's enough ego and hubris from me for now. .....
Dude, you're the man!
Respect.
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...(either because he's just not a good GM or because he doesn't have good enough taste to pick adventures that are fun) I'll bow out of the game anyway.
I'm set a bit back by the assumption that a GM would buy a module and never use it. I've done that, but I'd be really sad to find that the industry finds this acceptable. They're ALL fun, right? Otherwise you wasted your money on them?
That just hits my ear wrong, I guess.
Think of it this way. The GM's role is like the role of a narrator for an audio book.
Occasionally in my life I've encountered an actual storyteller. They're kind of rare in the modern day, but are often associated with camping. This person is how I, personally, see the GM. They're not reading from a book, nor narrating anything. They're spinning a yarn. Sure they're not making it up on the fly, but they're developing it as they go. They're playing up parts that are working and are skipping or flat leaving out parts that aren't. Just as you wouldn't tell the exact same ghost story to cub scouts as you might to teenagers, you can still use all the same elements to tell a good story.
A GM who is only narrating, in my own personal view, isn't worth much and ought to be replaced. Again, I'm okay if that's just me.
Lots of interesting stuff.
Thanks for the interesting and honest reply. And don't worry about the ego thing. All writers need to have a healthy ego to be good at what they do. If you didn't think what you wrote was good, how would you dare to submit it for publishing?
GMs need that same healthy ego. If you aren't pretty sure of yourself, how would you have the nerve to put yourself in the DM's chair?
At risk of stroking your ego, I'll just tell you that we ran RHoD (I was playing for a change) last year, and had a great time. I would say it ranks among my top ten of all time (started playing in 1978). The DM altered it a bit to fit into his own homebrew world and account for the fact we were a big party (7 players). He also added some of his own material to allow us to start at 1st level. He's pretty skilled and did it very seamlessly, and he left the main plotline pretty much alone.
That's the kind of thing I mean when I'm talking about changing written adventures, as well as the necessary ad-libbing when the PCs go in a completely unexpected (but fun) direction. You've got a great team of writers and developers, but they have to write for what they see as the largest part of the audience, and necessary adjustments will have to be made by any DM whose group doesn't match those expectations. And no writer, no matter how talented, can anticipate every hare-brained and/or brilliant scheme players will come up with to meet the challenges of the adventure.
Anyway, thanks again, and keep up the good work, and I'll keep spending my kids' inheritance money on it.
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10. I have no expectations whatsoever of any module I play in. I try not to read modules I'll potentially play in (but sometimes someone offers to run something I may have read already). In which case I take nothing for granted and assume the GM is going to change things up to suit his group, his GMing style and to get the opportunity to insert encounters he's created/finds interesting.
Finally as a GM I often add/change/revise things as I feel is needed to suit my group of players or my idea of fantasy. For examples you can find a lot of my stuff in the Kingmaker boards.
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Creative Director
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[I'm set a bit back by the assumption that a GM would buy a module and never use it. I've done that, but I'd be really sad to find that the industry finds this acceptable. They're ALL fun, right? Otherwise you wasted your money on them?
In my opinion, if you buy a module, flip through it, see a piece of art or a map that inspires you to write up a cool encounter for your game... you've used the module and justified its purchase. And by extension, if all you ever do with a module is read it, that counts as well. The entertainment of just reading a module is worth the cover price if it's a well-written module.
Of course, running the module means you're getting a better value for the purchase overall, but you don't have to RUN a module in order to learn from it.
I am stuck as a Gm because of issues with the other options mostly great idead men but no discipline with the write up and the other follow the adventure to the letter. As a player I want to enjoy myself and as such have broken or detroyed a preplanned adventure by my actions. The gm that could not adjust to the situation caused premature end to the adventure. Not fun in the long run which forced me back into running as i am flexible.
I prefer sand box adventures and would like to say I am going to run Kingmaker the first AP ever for our group. That being said it is designed to be modified by GM to make it work so I am 5 for everything.
Like it or not all RPG's are in essence codified house rules and being a professional means ya just get paid to do something. Just my 2 cents.
CLOSING CHALLENGE: We're ALWAYS looking for talented new authors and designers to take on freelance assignments. So consider this a challenge—if you think you, or frankly ANYONE, thinks they're able to produce better content than we're already offering... we want to hear about it. Take part in RPG superstar. Submit adventures to our Pathfinder Society org play. Submit articles to other companies like Open Design or Green Ronin or Super Genius Games. Let us know about your talents. Because if you're as good as you claim to be, I want to give you money to help make US more awesome! :-)
Thanks to some recent injuries and the economy being what it is i find myself with a surfeit of time and a deficit of money. What should would someone wanting to write adventures for pathfinder society need? The PHB and beastiary obviously. A few issues of kobold magazine to learn the format?
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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James, I'd like to expand my previous answer, and if you don't mind, I'd like to use RHoD to do it.
It's no secret that I really like RHoD. I think it does something new and different, and I think it does it very well. It's my example of a limited sandbox. "The PCs have a few weeks before something bad happens. They can do what they like in the meantime." The party can arrange for allies, try to stymie the opposition, try to turn the bad guys' allies, etc.
But I've run RHoD three times now, and each time, there's been modifications, for three reasons. First, the PCs always try to do things you didn't think of, or didn't have the page count to cover: "we want to see if there's any powerful artifacts in the area that we could use against the army." "We want to find as much loot as we can, and use it to buy dwarven mercenaries." "We want to spy on the bad guys and attack their leaders in camp." Those lead to side adventures. (The mercenaries were held up because their leader, Prince Thorgrim, had been captured.)
As a sidebar, I also altered aspects so that individual PCs could shine. I replaced the behir encounter with a Bluespawn Godslayer, because one of the PCs had an Axiomatic sword, tailor-made to bypass the Godslayer's DR. (Also, see below.) One of the players had purchased "Heroes of Battle" and was really excited about it, so I added a half-dozen large-scale combat encounters.
Second: I wanted to flesh out the setting. Not everything in the valley ought to be connected to the immediate plotline of the advancing army. I introduced a minor faction, cultists of Erithnul, who were hoping to profit from the chaos of war. I expanded the leaders of Bristol and gave them individual, often competing, motives. I created a small number of retired adventurers living in the region, who could offer advice to the PCs.
This was particularly important in the third running, because I set RHoD as part of larger campaign. There was a were-rat incursion of Brindol for levels 1-5, and the githyanki Invasion (from DRAGON) would follow RHoD. (See, the campaign had a theme...) I wanted to plant seeds for upcoming adventures, and that meant modifying some aspects of RHoD.
Third, I revised aspects of the adventure I thought were weak or off-kilter. There's no purpose in dwelling on these, but I felt it was important to set some clues that would presage the mountain temple, to replace a thousand cure light wounds potions with potions of lesser vigor, to remove the dragon-hating behir from Team Dragon, and to put a wall all the way around Brindol.
So, how much tinkering did I do? Probably a 3 or a 4. Mostly additions rather than outright changes or swaps. I considered it my responsibility to make the campaign fun for the players.
CLOSING CHALLENGE: We're ALWAYS looking for talented new authors and designers to take on freelance assignments. So consider this a challenge—if you think you, or frankly ANYONE, thinks they're able to produce better content than we're already offering... we want to hear about it. Take part in RPG superstar. Submit adventures to our Pathfinder Society org play. Submit articles to other companies like Open Design or Green Ronin or Super Genius Games. Let us know about your talents. Because if you're as good as you claim to be, I want to give you money to help make US more awesome! :-)Thanks to some recent injuries and the economy being what it is i find myself with a surfeit of time and a deficit of money. What should would someone wanting to write adventures for pathfinder society need? The PHB and beastiary obviously. A few issues of kobold magazine to learn the format?
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CLOSING CHALLENGE: We're ALWAYS looking for talented new authors and designers to take on freelance assignments. So consider this a challenge—if you think you, or frankly ANYONE, thinks they're able to produce better content than we're already offering... we want to hear about it. Take part in RPG superstar. Submit adventures to our Pathfinder Society org play. Submit articles to other companies like Open Design or Green Ronin or Super Genius Games. Let us know about your talents. Because if you're as good as you claim to be, I want to give you money to help make US more awesome! :-)Thanks to some recent injuries and the economy being what it is i find myself with a surfeit of time and a deficit of money. What should would someone wanting to write adventures for pathfinder society need? The PHB and beastiary obviously. A few issues of kobold magazine to learn the format?
I had a similar thought.
Got a link?
What do you want written? Where would I submit it?
That sort of thing...
For organized play, like PFS or Living Greyhawk, no more than a 2; some flexibility is needed as parties are not always going to be balanced in the way that the module assumes they will be, given the nature of how parties are put together for these games, and sometimes adjustments have to be made to factor in time, but overall, the modules should play more or less as written to maintain continuity.
For an AP or home ran prewritten adventure, it depends on the adventure, but anywhere from 2 to 5, depending on how focused it is on a given aspect. If I am playing in LoF, and the party ends up in the plane of water for a significant portion of the campaign, then something went off the tracks somewhere; if I'm playing Kingmaker and the party ends up laying seige to Absalom, than as long the setup was natural and artfully done, great, the campaign is more or less in the party's hands anyway. Likewise if I am told upfront that the AP includes giants, I want to at some point see giants; I don't care if they are frost giants, fire giants, or pygmy giants, but I do expect to see some kind of giant at some point.
For homebrew, 5 all the way, after all, everything is free form to start with, so it seems redundant to require the DM to stick to the prewritten script, in this case free form piecing together done by the DM, hopefully with in-game input from the players.
Excellent...thank you very much.
5
Thanks to some recent injuries and the economy being what it is i find myself with a surfeit of time and a deficit of money. What should would someone wanting to write adventures for pathfinder society need? The PHB and beastiary obviously. A few issues of kobold magazine to learn the format?
Read here for more on writing for Pathfinder Society. The Core Rulebook and the Bestiary will be your friend (or the online PRD).
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Creative Director
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Thanks to some recent injuries and the economy being what it is i find myself with a surfeit of time and a deficit of money. What should would someone wanting to write adventures for pathfinder society need? The PHB and beastiary obviously. A few issues of kobold magazine to learn the format?
Kobold Quarterly uses quite a different format than we do for the Pathfinder Society scenarios. I'd pick up a couple of the more recent scenarios to study the format, then check out the "Writing for Pathfinder Society" page to get started.
EDIT: It's amusing that, not 10 minutes ago as I walked by Liz's desk, she warned me about ninjas...
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Creative Director
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Of course, running the module means you're getting a better value for the purchase overall, but you don't have to RUN a module in order to learn from it.I guess I always looked at my bookshelf of unused material and imagined you guys being sad about it.
:)
No way!
If it's on your bookshelf, and not unpurchased at the store and not boxed up in storage... GREAT SUCCESS! :-)
It's amusing that, not 10 minutes ago as I walked by Liz's desk, she warned me about ninjas...
>.>
<.<
^_^
I would very much like to canvass opinion on the above issue.
Could you please indicate your preference on a scale of 0 to 5, where the two extreme marks mean:
0 - you prefer your GM to run the adventure exactly as written,
5 - you are happy for your GM to make whatever modifications he wants.
Many thanks
Richard
EDIT: Since a number of players have already pointed this out, give PFS and non-PFS answers if you wish
4. I like people to keep house rules to a minimum. But for content, I prefer people make up their own campaigns and game worlds.
However, if you ARE going to use published adventures, then at least use most of it.
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I find the attitude of some of the posters a little strange. I think of modules more like recipes than dishes. The comparison to chefs is interesting, but a module isn't a meal from a world-class chef. It's a recipe from a world-class chef. I would love to play in a game run by a Paizo staffer or skilled freelancer. But we can't get that (or rarely, in the case of convention games). So we have to work from recipes.
But adventures are far more complex than a recipe. It's not like adding parsley to scrambled eggs. There are so many variables: what characters are being played, what they do, where they go, and how they react to NPCs. No adventure is ever run as written. Because adventures are not flowcharts with all the answers written down. The more complex the adventure, the more variation there will be. It is an inevitable part of the experience of role-playing.
When I play in a game, I expect the GM to fill his role: making a fun experience at the table. Whatever changes he needs to make to allow that to happen is fine. A poor GM who runs a module straight as written is still going to be a poor GM. A great GM will be great whether he changes things or not.
I GM for my game, and I definitely mix things up a lot. I also own more modules than I will ever run in my lifetime. I use them to steal encounters and statblocks to help enhance the game I am running. Just this week I used the pre-gens from Kingmaker Volume 6 as an opposing team in my Coliseum Morpheuon adventure. Did my players have more or less fun than if I had used the encounter straight from the book? I don't know. I do know they had fun, and that is the best I can do.
So to the original posters question, I answer 5. In all cases. A GM's job is hard enough without players second guessing all the time.
Theoretically...
-For PFS (if I wanted to play, which I don't) I'd want the GM to change things very little or not at all; so a 0.
-For PF modules I'd want the GM to have as much flexibility as possible; so a 5.
-For an PF AP I'd want the GM to follow the storyline but add some red-herrings, side-quests and personalized mini-adventures; so a 3 (maybe a 4).
But I haven't played a PC in about 3 or 4 years (sad, I know, but my skills are in demand for GMing) so I'm a bit biased and skewed when it comes to such things. :)
Since we're on the internet, is that "Infinite"?
MAYBE
but only relatively?
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I would very much like to canvass opinion on the above issue.
Could you please indicate your preference on a scale of 0 to 5, where the two extreme marks mean:
0 - you prefer your GM to run the adventure exactly as written,
5 - you are happy for your GM to make whatever modifications he wants.
Many thanks
Richard
EDIT: Since a number of players have already pointed this out, give PFS and non-PFS answers if you wish
4.5
I look at the adventure paths as "what is going on in the world" understanding that players don't always stay on the railroad tracks and you have to adjust.
Only reason it isn't a 5 is I believe you should try to stay true to the world or you'll lose consistancy. Creating and playing in a world you can explore based on it's rules is one of the best parts of the game. Drift to much and "made up" feel can overpower the "reality" of it.
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Scenario for those saying 0 on PFS that happened to me last week.
I was GMing #51. It was nighttime game at a store and I had exactly four hours. I had had an unexpectedly hard day at work and was not performing at my best (but I don't think the players noticed).
There are two points were the characters are supposed to seek out some NPCs in order to advance the plot. The second time they just didn't do it, instead using the time to finish off faction missions instead. Not bothering with the NPC they are supposed to seek out to advance the plot. There is an optional encounter which is supposed to be used if things are going fast.
The standard next encounter is an encounter with a crime lord, whose name got lost over all the other names and is important to some faction mission, none of which happen to be in play. They were supposed to be asking about him. They weren't.
Time is short, so I use the optional encounter and let them capture and interrogate the Sorceress who is supposed to fight to the death as a way as a way to get to the final encounter in the theater instead of tiredly going over the clues they had missed and made either me look incompetent for not empathizing it or them incompetent for not getting it.
Instead they had a fun combat encounter, everybody is happy. I felt good about this and proud of it. We finish just before we are kicked out.
To me, that is why there needs to be some flexibilty in PFS, a 1 or a 2 because you are reacting to players. There is at least one season 0 module (#7 Among the Living) which asks the GMs to place encounters where just in front of the party as needed.
What do you think of that?
It's like comparing a meal you make yourself to one you drive forward and get in a bag. Which is to say, you cannot compare the two.
Depends how well you can cook.