Non traditional AP


Pathfinder Adventure Path General Discussion


Is it possible to have a non traditional AP? I was thinking of this; whether it was possible to have an AP where the end goal isnt necesarily to save the world or some variant thereof, but something different (take over a town, improve racial relations, become filthy rich, prevent a marraige, espionage of the highest order, get married...) or some other non traditional quest.

Silver Crusade

Council of Thieves is not a "save the world" type AP but I take your point.

What I would like to see is a mystery style AP where the PC's wake up somewhere with amnesia and no idea how they got there. Then they have to puzzle out what happened in the time that they have forgotten (a bit like Curse of the Azure Bonds).

Oh and a Pirate AP. Arrrr!!!!!

The Exchange

FallofCamelot wrote:

Council of Thieves is not a "save the world" type AP but I take your point.

What I would like to see is a mystery style AP where the PC's wake up somewhere with amnesia and no idea how they got there. Then they have to puzzle out what happened in the time that they have forgotten (a bit like Curse of the Azure Bonds).

Oh and a Pirate AP. Arrrr!!!!!

Yeah a true swashbuckling oceanic, become the pirate king adventure would be pretty damn cool.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Coltaine, maybe you should check out the Kingmaker Adventure Path.


Coltaine wrote:
(take over a town, improve racial relations, become filthy rich, prevent a marraige, espionage of the highest order, get married...)

Does the entire party get married to the same man/woman? That would be interesting!


Evil character, solo character, and high level APs!

Paizo shouldn't be afraid to make some APs shorter, for example only having 3-4 books instead of 6. This is especially true for the high level and solo character APs.


I support this approach. While "Save the..." adventures have their place, I'd like to see an investigation-based AP; Carrion Crown 1/6 offers some of what I'm talking about, but expects too much heroism. Kingmaker really stepped away from the traditional adventure; the AP became more and more centered around maintaining and protecting one's kingdom (a major plus for me and my groups).

One of my group generously offered to run Carrion Crown, letting me play for once, but I'm really sick of saving people, cities, etc. This is from a GM/player/amateur-designer standpoint. I'm certain GMs can work around this angle (I have in almost every AP), but why should it be central to the design process?

The easiest way to handle this is to reserve APs for extended, non-linear campaigns and only implement Save-the-day-the-princess-and-the-kingdom campaigns through modules. I know it won't happen, but I can always hope.


Jason S wrote:
Evil character

I would go for an adventure path that wasn't necessarily built for evil characters only, but that was a "stop the good guy" rather than "stop the evil guy" for once.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Jason S wrote:

Evil character, solo character, and high level APs!

Paizo shouldn't be afraid to make some APs shorter, for example only having 3-4 books instead of 6. This is especially true for the high level and solo character APs.

The behind the scenes ramp-up for launching an Adventure Path, be it 3 parts or 6 parts or 12 parts or whatever, is a LOT of work. Doing this more than 2 times a year would be more than we can handle, I suspect.

Furthermore, we don't want to mess with the fact that we always launch an AP at Gen Con, and tinkering with the length causes problems.

We've done linked module mini-campaigns before, and that'll likely be where we continue to do shorter projects like this. The Adventure Path is too successful at this point to tinker too much with, as well.

Shadow Lodge

James Jacobs wrote:


The behind the scenes ramp-up for launching an Adventure Path, be it 3 parts or 6 parts or 12 parts or whatever, is a LOT of work. Doing this more than 2 times a year would be more than we can handle, I suspect.

Furthermore, we don't want to mess with the fact that we always launch an AP at Gen Con, and tinkering with the length causes problems.

We've done linked module mini-campaigns before, and that'll likely be where we continue to do shorter projects like this. The Adventure Path is too successful at this point to tinker too much with, as well.

I agree you don't want to mess with a formula that is working and it helps that you explain publishing ramifications like this here since most of us aren't in the publishing world and don't know how it functions. That said, the "high level AP" idea seems to be one that keeps recurring in thread after thread and I'm sure if you polled would get a substantial response from your fans.

My suggestion would be this - take your most popular AP's that also have built in potential for continuing into higher levels and produce a single module "Epilogue" designed to take characters up to 20th level. For example with CotCT it would be easy to do an Epilogue where the Brotherhood of the Bones gets ahold of the 7 artifacts and tries to raise Kazavon.

If "Epilogue" modules were designed well they would stand alone if you just wanted to run an adventure for 16-20th level characters. Thus they wouldn't be so tied to an AP that the only people who would buy them were people playing the AP to the end. I'd bet even people who finished an AP years ago would be excited to get their dusty character sheets back out and go for an encore of their favorite AP.


sabedoriaclark wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:


The behind the scenes ramp-up for launching an Adventure Path, be it 3 parts or 6 parts or 12 parts or whatever, is a LOT of work. Doing this more than 2 times a year would be more than we can handle, I suspect.

Furthermore, we don't want to mess with the fact that we always launch an AP at Gen Con, and tinkering with the length causes problems.

We've done linked module mini-campaigns before, and that'll likely be where we continue to do shorter projects like this. The Adventure Path is too successful at this point to tinker too much with, as well.

I agree you don't want to mess with a formula that is working and it helps that you explain publishing ramifications like this here since most of us aren't in the publishing world and don't know how it functions. That said, the "high level AP" idea seems to be one that keeps recurring in thread after thread and I'm sure if you polled would get a substantial response from your fans.

My suggestion would be this - take your most popular AP's that also have built in potential for continuing into higher levels and produce a single module "Epilogue" designed to take characters up to 20th level. For example with CotCT it would be easy to do an Epilogue where the Brotherhood of the Bones gets ahold of the 7 artifacts and tries to raise Kazavon.

If "Epilogue" modules were designed well they would stand alone if you just wanted to run an adventure for 16-20th level characters. Thus they wouldn't be so tied to an AP that the only people who would buy them were people playing the AP to the end. I'd bet even people who finished an AP years ago would be excited to get their dusty character sheets back out and go for an encore of their favorite AP.

Printed books have to fall within a page range, and higher level encounters leads to more stat blocks which take up more space. That takes away from the word space for telling the story and introducing art.

No I don't work for Paizo, but this argument and similar ones has come up on the boards before.

Shadow Lodge

wraithstrike wrote:


Printed books have to fall within a page range, and higher level encounters leads to more stat blocks which take up more space. That takes away from the word space for telling the story and introducing art.

I definitely see how it could be a challenge to get an adventure for 16-20th level characters into the right length, but I think Paizo is up to the challenge. With two bestiaries to draw on not every baddie has to be spelled out in detail in the book, and if they stay away from a dungeon crawl format which takes extra space for maps and breaking things down by room I think it could be done. They could also get themselves a little extra room by not doing as many supplemental articles in an "Epilogue" module.

I'm sure there are good reasons why Paizo hasn't done something like this yet, I'm just saying that the request for a high-level AP keeps coming up over and over and I think this would be something Paizo could pull off without messing with their print schedule or business model for AP's by selectively doing "Epilogues" of their most popular AP's.


On the side-thread, I crave the materials from SKR's drow-party campaign. I'm looking forward to We Be Goblins, too.

Coltaine wrote:
Is it possible to have a non traditional AP? I was thinking of this; whether it was possible to have an AP where the end goal isnt necesarily to save the world or some variant thereof, but something different (take over a town, improve racial relations, become filthy rich, prevent a marraige, espionage of the highest order, get married...) or some other non traditional quest.

To roll back in to the original question, I'd encourage looking at Council of Thieves (along with kingmaker, of course). With tweaks, this campaign's focus can shift widely.

Plus, book 2 is wildly non-traditional, and a boatload of fun. Running that play is one of my favorite sessions as a DM, ever.


I'm still quite new to RPG's. I'm a victim of the 1980's witch hunt. My parents banned RPG's in my home so I didn't grow up playing. I was robbed of a life of iconic adventures.
I'm actually looking for the EXACT OPPOSITE thing that Coltaine is looking for. I really want to play the very most traditional, loot-claiming, dragon-killing, evil-wizard-toppling adventure out there. What would you all recommend?


sabedoriaclark wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:


Printed books have to fall within a page range, and higher level encounters leads to more stat blocks which take up more space. That takes away from the word space for telling the story and introducing art.

I definitely see how it could be a challenge to get an adventure for 16-20th level characters into the right length, but I think Paizo is up to the challenge. With two bestiaries to draw on not every baddie has to be spelled out in detail in the book, and if they stay away from a dungeon crawl format which takes extra space for maps and breaking things down by room I think it could be done. They could also get themselves a little extra room by not doing as many supplemental articles in an "Epilogue" module.

I'm sure there are good reasons why Paizo hasn't done something like this yet, I'm just saying that the request for a high-level AP keeps coming up over and over and I think this would be something Paizo could pull off without messing with their print schedule or business model for AP's by selectively doing "Epilogues" of their most popular AP's.

They don't like just throwing stat blocks at us though. They like to their characters to have character, and that not means they have to be unique, but they normally have some sort of background which takes up a decent amount of space of its own. You can try to throw political challenges at them, but getting really high skill check modifiers is not that hard either.

PS:If they were to do it though I do think it should come on the tails(within 3 to 6 months) of an AP that just ended or as a way to get people to buy a re-release of an older one. I would do one as test, since games get harder to manage around 17th level. It takes a lot of skill to keep your guys alive long enough to keep a fight interesting, without killing the PC's, and not making it appear as though you are pulling the amount of strings necessary to not 1 or 2 round a fight.


Wildebob wrote:

I'm still quite new to RPG's. I'm a victim of the 1980's witch hunt. My parents banned RPG's in my home so I didn't grow up playing. I was robbed of a life of iconic adventures.

I'm actually looking for the EXACT OPPOSITE thing that Coltaine is looking for. I really want to play the very most traditional, loot-claiming, dragon-killing, evil-wizard-toppling adventure out there. What would you all recommend?

Folks can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Rise of the Runelords is your big winner there, perhaps followed by Second Darkness. This is not to say they are dull or trite at all, by the way--just that they kind of represent the platonic DnD megacampaign.

Full disclosure: played a druid throughout Second Darkness. Have not yet played or run RotR.


Pick Shackled City up. It is one of the best adventures that Paizo has put out. You will need to put some work into it, but it is well worth it.


That's funny you suggest RotRL, Fizzlebolt. I'm running it now for my group. It's been fun, even though I'm kind of a crappy GM. And I've heard almost nothing good about Second Darkness. (Sorry Paizo, I still love you!)I love the Darklands though...I'd love to love SD.

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