This has happened in APs for us before (Legacy of Fire, Council of Thieves, KingMaker)
The campaign is stalling due to the plot boring us all to death.
Alot of stuff seems to be stolen from earlier APs (soul bound dolls, hidden city of baddies, etc) and yet there really isnt a tie to anything serpenty enough yet.
there should be more clues to what the serpent folk are trying.
Enemies are redundant and boring.
There just isn't anything compelling to keep it going.
We don't really feel City of seven spears had much good work put into it.
Im really thinking of taking this one, scrapping it and building off of solzatha, and not having him be undead.
we round robin the DM seat and I really feel like i got dealt a stinker, we ran through the racing to ruin and it really did feel like there was something spectacular to run to but now its just way too sand boxy
Besides the whole competition adventurers feels like it was stolen from, what was that other module?..entombed with the Pharaohs or pact stone pyramid, one of those.
Anyway too much borrowed material here.
Im seriously considering just cancelling my AP subscription, maybe give it until carrion crown ( i swear if there is another soul bound doll im out!)
but I need some ideas on how to save this one....
I'm not very familiar with the pre-CoT APs, but I don't think SS is that bad. I know my group is having a hard time getting interested in the plot in our current CoT-campaign, but that's because they didn't put an effort into creating characters with proper motivation. In my experience, "this plot is bad"-complaints is usually caused by the players not having put enough work into their characters or that they don't fit the campaign, or the GM being overworked so he can't put enough energy into exposition. Another cause could be bad group chemistry which hampers the role-playing aspects of the game. I would say that CoT is worse than SS in this regard since the PCs end up using much more time on fighting the shadowbeast menace than "the Man". Serpent's Skull makes it very clear that it's about exploration, and the transition between adventures is very smooth.
My advice, especially since your group has a very egalitarian setup (switching GMs and all), is to discuss this as the motivational problem it is. Maybe you should retcon some PCs as explorers? Add some backstory about a long-lost sister being in Kline's expedition? Increase the pressure from other expeditions? (I know my players, at least the most min-max'iest, would go nuts about the possibility of "NPCs stealing our treasure!")
I would agree that both Kingmaker and Serpent's Skull include a rather large amount of sandboxyness and that's not suited for all kinds of groups. SS should have advertized that fact more cleary, especially when the previous AP also was very sandboxy.
You mention some APs that this has happened to you before in. Have there been any APs it did not happen to you in?
If the answer is that some of the APs worked really well for you then expand on why they seemed to work. That may help with diciphering your issue.
If the answer is that all, or almost all, APs seem to stall for you then it may be that either this is not the best format for your campaigns, it could be things like amount of time to play (short sessions make the plot seem to move very slowly) or it may be that you need to adjust your DMing.
In particular if you don't like an encounter then you should change it. However even if you did not any given individual encounter should just not be that much of an issue. Evil dolls showing up repeatedly may be a flaw in some AP designs but its a minor one because they just don't represent more then a tiny fraction of overall play in any of the APs.
You mention the sandbox nature of two of the APs being an issue but also not that you had trouble with both Council of Thieves and Legacy of Fire. Legacy of Fire is really not a sand box style AP and Council of Thieves is only one if the DM/Players make it so with lots of side plots in the city.
As to stolen material - at this point I don't think that can really be avoided. Fantasy RPGs have been around for decades and there really is not that much new under the sun. Almost everything bears at least a passing resemblance to something that has come before. I don't really see a way to avoid that.
|
I have had groups that just didn't have the attention spans to run an entire AP with.
It might be that you might want to look at making the 3rd or 4th book the "Capstone" adventure in your APs. 3 books takes you to about level 10 (most times) which still feels like an accomplishment if you aim to make the 3rd book's bad guy the big bad.
... but that's because they didn't put an effort into creating characters with proper motivation. In my experience, "this plot is bad"-complaints is usually caused by the players not having put enough work into their characters or that they don't fit the campaign, or the GM being overworked so he can't put enough energy into exposition.
A agree. In our experience (we're a little more than half-way through Racing to Ruin right now), having characters with proper motivation is CRUCIAL to keeping the AP interest alive. Your PCs must be interested in exploring Saventh-Yhi first and foremost. The serpent folk threat should not be a plot focus until the PCs descend into Ilmurea. Until then, the PCs should expect the game to focus on archeology and uncovering the secrets of the lost Azlanti city.
Your round-robin'ing of the GM seat makes any carte blanche customization difficult (other than swapping x monster for y bikini princess anyway). I think you guys may just be having some issues with pacing rather than plot-lines. Mostly because expecting to have the end goal in sight halfway through an AP is not how any published campaigns have been in any system I've played/run. My group gets together once a month so we can absorb pitch shifts between adventures. If yours is meeting weekly or more often it will make things like the transition from "turbo race 9000!" to "and then there was a big spooky house on the hill" seem all the more bizarre. As far as encounter types or content being "omg recycled" I have to cast a bit of a disparaging eye there but that discussion could wheel off into the stratosphere and would not do anyone any good.
My response to your blowing the "GM Conch" would be to modify the front of the adventure to contain enough rails and direction to ease the hyped up racing to ruin adventurers into the forboding archeology experiment that is Saventh-Yhi. Instead of "go where you want" you could continue to goad them onward with the GM prod-stick of your choice (city collapsing and ushering them onwards, awful monsters, plotline bait NPC chases, a creative NPC tour guide like ghosts or something).
If you guys are like 60% complete and 90% bored then I'm not sure you have any real leeway to modify the adventure to get them all jazzed about the museum of ancient history. If that is the case, one option yet available to you is to take the big bad and some of the encounters and put them on some plot rails to seek out the PC's and "turn up the heat" as it were. That way you can eliminate some of the sandboxyness that is plaguing your group, speed up the denouement, and hopefully get them excited about playing the AP again.
As always YMMV
I think that part of the problem may lie in the switching of GMs after each part of the AP.
All the players/GMs end up knowing the plot, so there are no real surprises anywhere for anyone.
Any tweeking to adjust the AP more to the group likely does not happen, as that GM will not be in the GM's seat past for the full adventure.
On that note, if your part of the AP feels too sandboxy, then change it up. Put in set goals, timelines, etc.. (rails if need be) to engage your players again. Have the serpents be more active. Have the serpents also be in competition to secure all parts of the city, not just the other factions, whether they are in their natural form or a disguised form.
We started AP's with Second Darkness, the party was already in riddle port having just finished kobold king modules.
It was awesome, lots of fun and we were always doing something and we 'knew' Drow were the inevitable bad guys, then making some of the normal powerful elves bad guys of sorts was a cool plot twist. A demon infested forest wasn't bad either.
Legacy of fire just plain was horrible.
We expected a gnoll bashing desert/treasure finding campaign and we hardly saw gnolls! especially in the first module.
The end boss didn't make any sense and we couldn't figure out what the point was.
We got TPK'D in house of the beast and we were glad to be done with it. Horrible.
We were excited for the Idea of Council of theives and were likewise let down. I started to get cool when we got to the pathfinder lodge and had a field day fighting vampires (I don't think the shadow beast thing was really a huge issue as it was a subplot and did what it was intended to do, have us focus on something we thought was the bad guy, but was just a flunky).
After the pathfinder lodge, going back to the manson and into the knot wasnt so bad, we TPK'd in the knot. Dang Medusa and lousy saving throw rolls for the whole party.
But the first few in that series were painful to get through.
Kingmaker was ok to start with, but the making of the kingdom got everyone bored to death. Simply put No one was interested.
When I talk about 'stealing material' Im talking explicitly of stealing one's OWN material. If the last AP you put out has secret dimensional space world, the next one shouldnt have the SAME thing.
Soul Bound Dolls, I mean really, are they an AP mascot?
If you're going to have genies in Legacy of Fire, don't put one in Second Darkness at the end.
Things like that.
Our Party started out this time, as a party full of dwarves, all of them. the Shiv Went well enough.
We lost a few party members and replaced them with 'cast aways'. We Didnt use the castaways from the AP because the DM knew there would be some deaths and he decided to make them a little faceless as to explain where the 'back up' PCs came from.
My wife's druid took a digger at the barbarian camp. So she started playing a witch.
The witch became our groups main explorer, she had that language hex and the charm hex, she translated everything, looked at all the walls and pictographs and used her charm hex in towns to question and study people.
That part of the adventure was really cool.
She was the one putting together what happened on the Jeneviere and that it was the lady, not the captain that was the villain.
The way the entire thing on the shiv went down, however, meant the word about the 'discovery' never got out.
So basically, the sargavan government was the only one who had an idea that 'something was up', so we didnt start out with a whole ton of opposing adventure groups.
And the government wasn't onto what was going on, more so than they were just following us, because we were new in town and had made a ruckus with some treasure we sold etc etc.
We made quite a bit of effort to conceal anything about lost cities or the serpent folk we killed.
We didnt realize until getting to tazion that the sargavan government was following us. (we ended up getting backtracked and lost in the mwangi and they actually got ahead of us)
Eventually, in the city of seven spears we ambushed the sargavans and killed their entire party)
Currently, the entire party consists of:
A witch/druid (my wife the the major one who is into 'archeology')
A gunslinger (we had an inquisitor but we just hand wave replaced her to play this gun slinger)
A Magus (that got rescued from a succubus)
A Ronin (nothing special as far as plot line)
A dwarf Ranger/Barb/Oracle/Rage Prophet.
Currently the rage prophet is the only original character (all the other dwarves have died, so everyone has had one character death) and only the dwarf and the witch have ever been on the shiv (and thus started the adventure originally)
the current members of the party are contracted to the party leader (the witch) for a share of the treasure and notoriety, the dwarf wants revenge against the snake people for the deaths of his breathern.
the others are just wanderers who signed on the the PC party as treasure hunters.
Our major problem is the city it's self. It's just not linked to the story.
For something that supposedly lost for thousands of years it's been pretty much scavanged of treausre, there isnt anything incredibly interesting after the first few session to see or do, and the abandonded city is littered with more humanoids than riddleport!
So it has boiled down to this.
A war.
And we've a grand total of 4 serpent folk.
The party hasn't run into solzatha yet.
I was thinking of reducing (heavily) the amount of charau-ka in the city, increasingly (dramatically) the amount of serpent folk there, hand waving the different districts and their significance (at the moment)
and having the human tribe in hiding, as a source of information (since the party hasnt found them yet either.
This way the living solzatha is in charge of the serpentfolk (and his undead) on the surface doing an exploration of the city and looking into these spear things (which he hasnt figured out yet but are definately a thing of interest) and there are serpentfolk here and doing something, to link this to the rest of the serpent folk appearances, because up until now the party has been like "what the hey" random snake bosses semmingly untied to anything.
We have seriously had our fill of fighting monkeys, and this ahcheck whatever demon god guy and his followers? seriously? did we need another derailment faction?
Are there no other expeditions? Because the presence of the other expeditions is a really big part of the second and third adventure. The incentive to deal with the different tribes is to make that part of the city "claimed" by the PCs. Without the pressure of grabbing things first, those adventures won't work as well, since the momentum of the treasure hunt is lost. And don't say that there's no way anyone would find out the what the PCs are up to. Unless they didn't buy any expedition gear, never sold off large amounts of loot, killed the other castaways (because they are going to say SOMETHING happened on that island) and look totally native, word is going to get out about a groups of weirdos going out into the jungle. And that's not even considering that the other factions could be using divination spells. To sum up: The other factions are meant to be a plot device. Though the PCs could conceivably stop them from setting out, this will hurt the plot, and should in the worst case scenario be deus ex'd. By all means, give the PCs a head start for good ideas, but the NPC factions should always follow them.
It sounds to me like your group wants more linear, "end goal"-oriented plots. And as far as I can see, that's not the way most APs work, they have a tendency to only introduce the "main villain" in the two final adventures (I think this is almost a rule, though as mentioned I'm not that familiar with the pre-CoT APs). For more linear plots, try using the adventures as one-shots. For example, Varnhold Vanishing, Blood for Blood, Sixfold Trial, Infernal Syndrome and Smuggler's Shiv are great adventures that are easily converted into one-shot adventures.
This has happened in APs for us before (Legacy of Fire, Council of Thieves, KingMaker)
I'm not surprised that happened with Council of Thieves and Legacy of Fire, both of which have huge problems. I'm not a huge fan of this path either.
But Kingmaker? The plot is the interaction between you and the players. If it's boring, it's pretty much both your fault. I'd look to see what in your style is causing this problem. Because I don't think the play style isn't a part of the problem here.
And four APs in this short amount of time? That also suggests that there's not a lot of depth being put into RP here.
|
I really don't understand how a group can round-robin the GM duties within the same campaign.
Sure, I've been in groups where several people had games on the boil, and gave the sitting GM a break every few months, but they were often different systems.
If they were the same system, they were always different campaigns. Even if they nominally used the same gameworld, they were taking place decades apart, in different ends of a continent, and there was a gentleman's agreement that no-one would try to have his PCs meet.
Managing each campaign was the sole responsibility of one GM; I can't see how it would be done differently, unless it were a total freeform, 'take each day as it comes', which you profess not to like.
Of course you don't see the links between the chapters; you haven't read the next chapters. How is a GM expected to foreshadow anything, if he doesn't know what's coming up or why?
I would appreciate a more story-oriented AP as well. Book one was very story oriented, had a cast of NPCs, memorable moments etcetera. I really liked Pezock, the cannibals, the ghouls, the temple of Zura... it all is really innovative and interesting in my mind. Book two wasn't that bad either-- more memorable moments and memorable NPCs, cool locations, encounters with a neat flair. I didn't quite like the finale but everything up to Tazion was pretty cool in my opinion.
But as we're getting into Book three as well, well... it's really same-faced and boring.
Session one, part one: Draw some ruins. Draw some more ruins. Enemy: humanoids, a ghost, and a giant natural predator.
Session two, part three: Draw a ziggurat, and some ruins. Enemy: humanoids, natural predators, and a giant natural predator.
Session three, part two: Draw a ziggurat, and some ruins. Enemy: humanoids and a giant magical demon.
Session four, part four: Draw a ziggurat, and some ruins. Enemy: humanoids and a giant natural predator that's called a magical beast but really like there's nothing much magical about it.
Session five, part five: Draw a ziggurat, and some ruins. Enemy: humanoids and a giant natural predator.
Session six, part eight: Draw a ziggurat, and some ruins. Enemy: humanoids and a group of giant natural predators.
There's only so many times you can have a fight on a ziggurat before it just gets yawn-inducing. We haven't touched part six and seven yet, but I have a feeling they won't break this theme.
On top of that, there's like... no one in this book to interact with. I mean, the other camps are there, but like unless your party goes around courting favors with evil creatures then you're just going to hack and slash your way through everything. No memorable NPCs so far in a month and a half of playing this book. I never thought I'd see a module where the good guys would be the ones hacking and slashing and the bad guys are the ones using diplomacy and settling things without bloodshed.
On top of that, all of the treasure is like... +1 weapon, +1 armor. No real exciting pieces of equipment so far besides savage sting and the rod of well-deserved rest, and the rod of well-deserved rest is so expensive that you just feel guilty not selling it. Maybe I'm spoiled from
Hopefully Book four will be interesting-- my DM says that it'll be good and that it looks varied.
|
|
I really don't understand how a group can round-robin the GM duties within the same campaign.
Sure, I've been in groups where several people had games on the boil, and gave the sitting GM a break every few months, but they were often different systems.
If they were the same system, they were always different campaigns. Even if they nominally used the same gameworld, they were taking place decades apart, in different ends of a continent, and there was a gentleman's agreement that no-one would try to have his PCs meet.Managing each campaign was the sole responsibility of one GM; I can't see how it would be done differently, unless it were a total freeform, 'take each day as it comes', which you profess not to like.
Of course you don't see the links between the chapters; you haven't read the next chapters. How is a GM expected to foreshadow anything, if he doesn't know what's coming up or why?
+1 Snorter, round-robin'ing the APs is uh, erm, something of a horrible idea IMVHO. It could work with series of unlinked modules, but in AP - where the GM should be aware of the entire storyline in order to be able to foreshadow, anticipate and plan ahead ... nawww, just can't see it work. It's likely the reason why the OP feels his games are so disjointed.
|
I mean no offense, but if you really didn't like Legacy of Fire OR Kingmaker, I have to wonder if you're going to enjoy any future Pathfinder APs. Those two were some of the best written adventures I've seen in recent years.
Seconded. I was thinking the very same thing. Sounds like you guys need to pick a GM and stick with him/her for an entire AP. If that doesn't work, then maybe APs just aren't your thing.
Good luck!
-Skeld
Let's not boil this into a "dude if you don't like it lump it" thing. Pendagast I have a feeling that your tastes for adventure baths are different than mine (lol I would have fixed the spelling but "bath" simply made me laugh too hard). Myself and my group tend to get bored of "monster x" adventure cycles when stretched out accross 6 books and 15 levels of play.
That being said, what sorts of things content-wise excite your group? If they just need more hack n smash on a consistent monster type other than crazy monkey-dudes then you have a good handle on what the group needs to reduce to 0 or fewer hitpoints. Adding in scads of lizard folk may create issues with lizard person fatigue by the time the published adventures start dishing them out. But that may just require a little kibitzing a bit with the GM next in line to figure out if that will make their life more troublesome.
I feel the same way about this AP. I don't think it's just you or your group's problem. Other APs were great in ways this one... isn't.
RotRL kept things fresh and interesting throughout. In particular,
SD, for all its flaws, always felt like it was going somewhere, and the pace kept changing in new and interesting ways. (Even if the execution was sometimes questionable.)
Legacy of Fire also really kept things interesting:
Kingmaker, while a different beast than all the rest, had a lot to hang your hat on.
I hope to play CotCT and/or CoT someday, but cannot comment on them for now.
Serpent's Skull... I dunno.
So it's not just you. Not every AP can be a winner.
But I'm not canceling my subscription. Carrion Crown looks amazing and I'm psyched for Jade Regent too.
Creative Director
|
Whether or not one AP is fun or boring is really something that's left up to the individual group.
That said, we deliberately ramped down on the overarching story element in both Kingmaker AND Serpent's Skull, because of a perception from feedback that our APs were TOO story reliant and didn't allow for enough sandboxy fun.
Going forward, I suspect we'll be moving back and forth between sandboxes and story driven APs, in a constant search to find the perfect blend of the two.
In the immediate future, though, both the next AP (Carrion Crown) and the one that follows (Jade Regent) WILL be more story-based and less sandboxy. So I'm preparing for complaints that we're hopping back on the railroad! CHOO CHOOOOO! :-)
|
Creative Director
|
Yeah, it looks like City of Seven Spears is the Memory of Darkness of SS ... Shame, given the potential. Paizo, next time you do an AP please stick to the tried and tested writers (yeah, even that Spicer guy).
Not always an option, alas. "Tried and Tested" writers get burnt out or lose interest in the game, (and even if they don't they're capable of flubbing things now and then). So if we don't take risks now and then with new authors, we'll eventually run out entirely.
That said, we're not "trying out" any new authors for Carrion Crown OR Jade Regent.
|
|
Yeah, it looks like City of Seven Spears is the Memory of Darkness of SS ... Shame, given the potential. Paizo, next time you do an AP please stick to the tried and tested writers (yeah, even that Spicer guy).Not always an option, alas. "Tried and Tested" writers get burnt out or lose interest in the game, (and even if they don't they're capable of flubbing things now and then). So if we don't take risks now and then with new authors, we'll eventually run out entirely.
That said, we're not "trying out" any new authors for Carrion Crown OR Jade Regent.
You've made my day James. I have high hopes for both CC and JR, and I', glad to see familiar faces writing them (even if that means even more of that Greg A. Vaughan dude).
As for finding new authors - how about making a "dry run" of new talent in PFS/regular modules, and once they prove themselves assign them to the APs? Speaking of which, I hope you get Crystal to write an AP module sometime. The gal rocks, with her PFS mods rapidly becoming my favorites!
|
Creative Director
|
You've made my day James. I have high hopes for both CC and JR, and I', glad to see familiar faces writing them (even if that means even more of that Greg A. Vaughan dude).
As for finding new authors - how about making a "dry run" of new talent in PFS/regular modules, and once they prove themselves assign them to the APs? Speaking of which, I hope you get Crystal to write an AP module sometime. The gal rocks, with her PFS mods rapidly becoming my favorites!
1) We're already and have been taking lots of steps to test out authors on the PFS and on modules. That method works—see Brandon Hodge as a great example.
2) Check out who's writing "The Harrowing."
...next time you do an AP please stick to the tried and tested writers (yeah, even that Spicer guy).
Hah! Thanks for the shout out!
...even if that means even more of that Greg A. Vaughan dude....
NO! His streak must be broken!
|
|
...next time you do an AP please stick to the tried and tested writers (yeah, even that Spicer guy).Hah! Thanks for the shout out!
...even if that means even more of that Greg A. Vaughan dude....NO! His streak must be broken!
I'm slowly coming to conclusion that the rule "Greg A. Vaughan must write an episode of a Paizo AP" is one of the Fundamental Truths of the Universe, and if it shall for some reason be violated, doom will come to this world.
2) Check out who's writing "The Harrowing."
That looks amazing~!! Pre-ordered!
This has happened in APs for us before (Legacy of Fire, Council of Thieves, KingMaker)I'm not surprised that happened with Council of Thieves and Legacy of Fire, both of which have huge problems. I'm not a huge fan of this path either.
But Kingmaker? The plot is the interaction between you and the players. If it's boring, it's pretty much both your fault. I'd look to see what in your style is causing this problem. Because I don't think the play style isn't a part of the problem here.
And four APs in this short amount of time? That also suggests that there's not a lot of depth being put into RP here.
Kingmaker was cool, especially in the beginning. The whole building the city thing lost us due to the lack of real time spent on adventuring, no one liked it. Plan on trying this one again and just appointing NPCs (maybe as puppets) to run the kingdom.
Are there no other expeditions?
As i said above, the other castaways never got fleshed out. We used up those "faceless castaways" mainly as replacement PC's, our current expedition leader, the Witch is one of those.
A few other castaways got eaten by cannibals.
So no NPCS made it off the island.
There was one other expedition that followed us/spied on us to figure what was going on about the loot etc off the island, which was sargavan government. We ambushed them in the city of seven spears and killed them off.
As of yet, no other interlopers have shown up.
|
That said, we deliberately ramped down on the overarching story element in both Kingmaker AND Serpent's Skull, because of a perception from feedback that our APs were TOO story reliant and didn't allow for enough sandboxy fun.
Well let me just say my group itself really did not like the first book of serpent skull and we never even got through the first book of Kingmaker mostly because my group really hate the Sandbox elements.
Ok to give you guys ideas of what we thought was fun:
Anything to do with the kobold king was a BLAST.
Second Darkness was fun (if thou we made it our own sandbox at parts)
Couldnt have had more fun in a city with two elf armies fighting in it, while we ignored them all and hunted for a green dragon (dunno why he got our interest, but thats what we spent most of our time doing)
Armageddon echo was a little meh but we had a HUGE blast fighting in that library and the fight before going into the echo was epic!
(Im trying to think SD was 2 years ago for us!)
All in all we left every gaming session at SD hooting and hollering and spent an hour of the next gaming session talking about the last one!
We liked Flight of the Red Raven.
We thought pact stone pyramid and entombed with the pharaoh were "meh" and they were actually included in part of our Legacy of Fire (as we didnt spend the 'year' of game time doing nothing between the first module and the second.
We WOULD have been REALLY excited about traveling the the city of brass if we hadnt gotten TPKd before it, however very much disliked the whole alternate dimension caused by a magic item 'mechanic' as the alternate dimension thing was getting over used in APs.
If i never see another pugwampi again it will be too soon.
AND that being said i was playing a monk!!
The demonic forest was too fun in SD.
There have been way too many succubus's in the APs (what like at least three)
We are all tired of alternate dimensions please no more of those.
So anyway, we had a BALL on the SHIV (despite some deaths)
My wife with her witch was really into the deciphering thing and following lost codes and cryptography, it just lost it's flair with tazion.
Tazion was a flop.
It was a giant sewer pipe for all practical purposes.
Would have liked to have seen more Zura Cult something or else here instead.
I think the city of seven spears has just lost us. its big an huge and think there are alot of random weird stuff here.
Not at all what we expected from a lost city.
So im looking for a way to tweak it to get something back and going to see if anything else is this AP is going to be fun like the shiv.
that being said, lots of death in the first two modules, so lack of character continuity might be a problem, we really had no engines to ressurect and the one character that got a raise dead used on them was ticket about the -2 HD thing for EVER. (big downer)
But as far as changing DM every AP, heck i dont think they should change WRITERS every AP either!
|
|
I'm not very familiar with the pre-CoT APs, but I don't think SS is that bad. I know my group is having a hard time getting interested in the plot in our current CoT-campaign, but that's because they didn't put an effort into creating characters with proper motivation. In my experience, "this plot is bad"-complaints is usually caused by the players not having put enough work into their characters or that they don't fit the campaign, or the GM being overworked so he can't put enough energy into exposition. Another cause could be bad group chemistry which hampers the role-playing aspects of the game.....
+100
I loved Kingmaker (DM'd it) and I love sandbox campaigns even as a player.
My entire group (6 players) utterly DESPISED Kingmaker and after the first book, i was threatened with a hangin if i continued it. Which is a crying shame....Apparently they MUST have super-mega plot/story handed to them (and though they deny it, i say they want to be railroaded) or they aren't very satisfied (which is ironic cause they were clamouring for a sandbox campaign for months prior to me running it). So another player decided to DM a 'save the world' super-adventure from another publishing company instead...one that involves burning skies.
So obviously i haven't even offered to run SS. :_(
Kingmaker was ok to start with, but the making of the kingdom got everyone bored to death. Simply put No one was interested.
Once you realized that, did you try to just skip all the kingdom building as the books advise you to in such cases? They even let you know everything that would happen to the kingdom in case you don't want to have anything to do with the kingdom building.
Kingmaker was ok to start with, but the making of the kingdom got everyone bored to death. Simply put No one was interested.
Once you realized that, did you try to just skip all the kingdom building as the books advise you to in such cases? They even let you know everything that would happen to the kingdom in case you don't want to have anything to do with the kingdom building.
nah, two session of kingdom building bored everyone so much that they just didnt want to play it at all anymore. Thats why I figure we will revisit that one at some point (we were thinking after we are done with SS)
First of all, let me once again point out how awesome it is that Mr. Jacobs takes time out of his work schedule to write here in the forums. Let us hope he will never tire of our bickering.
Then over to SS: It strikes me as weird that I have gotten a TOTALLY different vibe from City of Seven Spears than what you guys are describing. I'm itching to bring the ruined city with it's different district and dangerous inhabitants to life! I can imagine having my players try to curry favour with the different tribes and NPC factions and the inevitable breakdowns in negotiation. I can even throw in almost any wild creature (magical beast, ooze, dinosaur, even flumph!) into the ruins which are uninhabited. Yes, I understand that this is modifying the adventure some, but it's not crazy. Going from "this tribe will attack the PCs on sight" to "this tribe will send a few messengers before attacking the PCs" isn't a huge change. Note that I have specifically told my players that I am expecting diplomacy and intrigue and will crack down on any direct attacks. Assassinations and surgical strikes against the leaders will of course be cool, but the tribe is still living there. Indeed, if the PCs are walking into the tribe's base and expect to kill them all in a straight-up fight, it's not that far fetched to assume that in time the entire tribe will join the fray (and 4 PCs vs 100 1HD dudes is not an even fight). But maybe they ally with another tribe or expedition? Then we can do an awesome battle-scene! Am i totally wrong in this "vision" of City of Seven Spears?
Pendagast: I think that a direct fix for the adventure would be:
- Talk about PC motivation and ways to make the exploration part more appealing
- Send in the other expeditions! Maybe that's a bit deus-ex'y, but you need them to create opposition
- Think about some set piece battles with the expeditions! THey raid your camp! They attack your allies! They ally with your enemies! They ask for help because they have been attacked by someone/something!
- Downplay patrols, after beating one, let the PCs takesom set damage divided amongst the party and just say they kill them or some other fix to speed things along
- Send envoys from the tribes to create opportunities for alliances
- If all else fail, rush in the events at the end of the adventure and start the events in the Vaults a bit early
First of all, let me once again point out how awesome it is that Mr. Jacobs takes time out of his work schedule to write here in the forums. Let us hope he will never tire of our bickering.
Then over to SS: It strikes me as weird that I have gotten a TOTALLY different vibe from City of Seven Spears than what you guys are describing. I'm itching to bring the ruined city with it's different district and dangerous inhabitants to life! I can imagine having my players try to curry favour with the different tribes and NPC factions and the inevitable breakdowns in negotiation. I can even throw in almost any wild creature (magical beast, ooze, dinosaur, even flumph!) into the ruins which are uninhabited. Yes, I understand that this is modifying the adventure some, but it's not crazy. Going from "this tribe will attack the PCs on sight" to "this tribe will send a few messengers before attacking the PCs" isn't a huge change. Note that I have specifically told my players that I am expecting diplomacy and intrigue and will crack down on any direct attacks. Assassinations and surgical strikes against the leaders will of course be cool, but the tribe is still living there. Indeed, if the PCs are walking into the tribe's base and expect to kill them all in a straight-up fight, it's not that far fetched to assume that in time the entire tribe will join the fray (and 4 PCs vs 100 1HD dudes is not an even fight). But maybe they ally with another tribe or expedition? Then we can do an awesome battle-scene! Am i totally wrong in this "vision" of City of Seven Spears?
Pendagast: I think that a direct fix for the adventure would be:
- Talk about PC motivation and ways to make the exploration part more appealing
- Send in the other expeditions! Maybe that's a bit deus-ex'y, but you need them to create opposition
- Think about some set piece battles with the expeditions! THey raid your camp! They attack your allies! They ally with your enemies! They ask for help because they have been attacked by...
well they already killed one expedition.
I think I need some more runes and stuff to read and find. That really lead the group when on the shiv, and then i twas missing here and in the 2nd module.
It mentions pictographs buts its more along the lines of blah blah blah off to something more interesting.
That IS what's interesting to this group, I dont think you would have even got them to wander off into the jungle without it.
We even walked around the whole salt mine thing and never did it because we were so 'busy' getting to the lost city.
we REALLY started to get bored walking around the jungle in racing to ruin with unconnected encounter after unconnected encounter.
Thats where everyone really got lost, Tazion was a disappointment and so far the two districts they have been in in City of seven spears as been "oooh ahhh" more monkey men. Which is shades of tazion.
Im really thinking about changing the whole rest of this module, because if we have any more of that, that will be it for getting everyone back to the gaming table for a while, like until carrion crown comes out, im sure.
Whichever DM ran your first installment ruined the AP for you. It is pretty explicit in Smuggler's Shiv that these 6 NPCs are important in later installments. By letting them be eaten by cannibals, there was no "race" in Racing to Ruin, and no incentive to be "first" at discovering Saveth-Yhi, no conflict between groups of explorers, no chance to role-play these conflicts (even though in book 4 there is a plot hook involving one camp attacking another and the party absorbing another camp).
Whoever ran book 1 did everyone else a massive disservice. The moral of this story to me is "don't round-robin DM an AP".
Whichever DM ran your first installment ruined the AP for you. It is pretty explicit in Smuggler's Shiv that these 6 NPCs are important in later installments. By letting them be eaten by cannibals, there was no "race" in Racing to Ruin, and no incentive to be "first" at discovering Saveth-Yhi, no conflict between groups of explorers, no chance to role-play these conflicts (even though in book 4 there is a plot hook involving one camp attacking another and the party absorbing another camp).
Whoever ran book 1 did everyone else a massive disservice. The moral of this story to me is "don't round-robin DM an AP".
I can't remember how many NPCs there were, one (cleric in chains) was so hostile he just ran off into the jungle, i think we found pieces of him and a blood trail later. Two of the female NPCs ended up becoming defacto replacement PCS, the gnome was killed at the cannibal camp with his tian xian buddy. Our frontal assault on the cannibals probably wasnt the best way to 'save' them.
Pezcock never got off the island, we didn't really have much interaction with him. We left him alone.
Two girls, a gnome, an oriental guy and a rasta-cleric, wasn't that everyone?
This AP is shaping up to be one of my favorites. Im currently in the "reading them all on my Nook" phase to see if I want to attempt to run this online via Maptools/Ventrilo.
Im up to the beginning of Vaults of Madness (book 4) and I must say everything up to this point has been great with the following two exceptions...
1) There are ALOT of NPC's, especially with 5 factions going. Not bad for player's but that alot of hats for me to wear. I like this and dont like this. :)
2)Im not all that keen on the Paranoia/Insanity from book 4. I think it could possibly derail the game if everyone becomes paranoid/insane. I may limit it to direct contact with the "black stuff" rather than merely walking around a vault. I just started reading this one today, so I might not have the full picture yet.
Other than these two minor issues (for me at least), SS looks like its awesome. Shiv and Ruin were perfect. City of Seven Spears is great in its own right as its about as sandboxy as you can get without going all "kingmaker" on your group. The City can be tackled at whatever point you feel like starting at. Power to the players here. Just because a city is LOST to you, doesnt mean other creatures havent found it. A lost city doesnt have to be abandoned.
If I dont run this I'll run Kingmaker possibly with the kingdom building in the background and the PCs still as leaders of the new kingdom (just wont be crunching the actual numbers).
Whichever DM ran your first installment ruined the AP for you. It is pretty explicit in Smuggler's Shiv that these 6 NPCs are important in later installments. By letting them be eaten by cannibals, there was no "race" in Racing to Ruin, and no incentive to be "first" at discovering Saveth-Yhi, no conflict between groups of explorers, no chance to role-play these conflicts (even though in book 4 there is a plot hook involving one camp attacking another and the party absorbing another camp).
Whoever ran book 1 did everyone else a massive disservice. The moral of this story to me is "don't round-robin DM an AP".
So let me understand you correctly, its a sandbox, but we didnt follow the story line FOR the sandbox?
That doesn't make sense.
Actually, it's more that the first adventure stresses that the characters are important in the future, though it gives a few ideas of how to work around them. And I had one of the most hostile groups for the first adventure that I've ever encountered (abandoned the group after a while) and even they didn't manage to piss off the NPCs as badly as you apparently did. My guess is that the GM didn't really play them according to their personalities, but how should I know? I'm not in your game. In my experience, it's the group who makes the AP fun. If the group isn't trying, any adventure turns into a slog-fest.
The adventure makes it pretty clear that these guys are going to play a role in the next adventure. That's especially clear if you read Racing to Ruin (you really can't run a campaign properly as a connected story without having read most of the adventures).
But, in the end, theya re not needed to explain how the other expeditions came to the city after the PCs. You can even say "these guys just happened to fine the way at almost exactly the same time as you!". The only point is that they are pretty essential to the plot of City of Seven Spears and Vaults of Madness. They provide both rivals, allies and pressure. Bottom Line: Introduce the other expedition.
Bottom Line: Introduce the other expedition.
I did last session, they killed it.
I might speed up the gorilla king stuff and/or mesh it in with the charau-ka that are already there, bust it down to two other factions, gorilla king and serpent folk, with the PCs in the middle.
Get rid of the troglodytes and add more serpent folk. If they get in trouble i can have them find the human tribe that help them hide or sneak around etc.
an entire campaign shouldnt hinge on the 'immortality' of a few 1st level mooks on an island full of 'i eat yous'....
how do you assure their survival? just hand wave it?
no one in our group would buy it. especially with the Death of actual PCs, but the handcuffed guy he survived?
nah wouldnt work.
here's another thing i dont like, just leafing through encounters, in basically the same fight, this AP gives out 3 bracers of armor (boss gorilla, lady gorilla and gorilla demon) haven't seen any of this at all in the whole AP, but the gorillas just happen to have to corner market on these items? thats gonna flood the group with free Ac items for the witch and probably the gunslinger with one extra...this flooding thing happens alot too in APS...no good treasure in a fight where it seems there would be, then boom, tons of stuff that makes no sense, because well umm errr i need these critters ac to be higher. why cant boss gorilla just have a chain shirt? why cant demon gorilla have better AC because he's partly stuck as stone? that would leave one bracer of armor to be found.
Lack of treasure in the right parts, then treasure for the sake of enemy builds. Don't like it.
...wow. All I can say at this point is this. I am extremely glad I'll never have to play with your group. Yikes.
We tried to round-robin DM an AP once. Made it to the second module. After that everyone decided to stick with that person DMing everything. Lesson learned: for our group, round-robin DMing was a bad idea.
And that was for Curse of the Crimson Throne. I feel as a result our group didn't have as much of a link to Korvosa as the adventure would have liked.
For something like Serpent's Skull, which as I've seen so far all but requires very intense GM involvement, round-robining would be the kiss of death. IMHO.
what happened with us is, most of the npcs bit it on the island (gelik being the only survivor).
however since the party was only 4th level they did not have the wherewithal or funds to plan their own expedition spanning a thousand miles.
so they went looking for sponsors (the pathfinders found out thru gelik). they settled on the pirates (tho in a twist i made the sargavan goverment the rival faction)
all in all this is my favorite adventure path so far, growing up on indiana jones movies and always loving archeology this is really up my alley (having many books depicting examples of central american and greek art helps)
OK, I'll try again: You can't let them just kill the expedition in one or two encounters. Those expeditions are there to provide opposition. Maybe they kill this group, but the the organization will send new recruits. And honestly, if your players are going to kill the entire expedition (porters, cartographers, servants and labourers), then you have a big problem in general as they are butchering civilians. I might have misread this, but I assumed that each expedition consists of at least 20-30 people, but that most of them are noncombatans. THey're there to do the stuff the PCs don't wanna do.
If they totally rage out about it, explain in no uncertain terms: They can't stop the expeditions from showing up, but they can manage them. And really, the expeditions are just part of the adventure. I think that your problems stem from bad character motivation, lack of interest in sandbox play and having missed a few important plot points. Probably, this AP isn't for you. That does not make it bad.
Also: Loot will always be uneven. CoT had to many longswords and tridents. Changing loot to fit your group is a basic GM task. If Paizo doesn't consider good loot distribution a high priority, that does not make or break the AP.
Alternatively, you don't need to change the loot - just point out that maybe the other expeditions would be willing to trade if the pc's would talk to them instead of killing them.
Alternatively, you don't need to change the loot - just point out that maybe the other expeditions would be willing to trade if the pc's would talk to them instead of killing them.
That's an even better idea, Pual!
With regards to keeping castaways alive...
Personally I dont think keeping any specific castaways alive is that vital. Id let the group run with it the way they want.
For example, if Gelik gets killed, Id have him replaced with the expedition. You DO NEED at least one survivor though. He/she could have loose lips with some booze (or fall off the wagon, Aerys was it?) in a local tavern (or on the rescue ship) in Eleder and word of the Shiv discoveries could spread that way.
I also agree on the round robin GM seat, bad idea.
You have said that the players were tight lipped, didn't say anything to anyone. Why? That would seem to be a bit of meta-gaming to me, as why would they be so closed knit after only a few weeks togther? Where they all orphans and loners?
Anyways, the other castaways, while they could lead to the other expeditions, were not the only way to have those expeditions happen. When the waters were lowered in the temple on the Shiv, it could have signaled somewhere else, which lead to an investigation, say by the Aspis Consortium, where the word leaked out, and all of the expeditions were off and running. Or have some dividnation with contact other plane spells set off the race. Or other GM derived reason...
PCs had a head start (but how did they finance the trip? hunting for food would allow the other expeditions to catch up), but now all 5 factions are on site. They have arrived recently. One group is looking to know what happened to their lead element (some good RP possible here, depending on spells and evidence left).
Are your PCs evil? If not, why did they kill the LN Governement of Sargova expedition (it was that one right)?